Wednesday, February 25, 2015

I've Journaled A Lot Over The Years, But I Have Nothing To Show For It. I Throw My Writings Out Because I Don't Like To Think That If I Was Hit By A Bus Someone Would Find A Journal Of Mine And Use Something I Wrote Four Years Ago To Define Me Forever. It's Like Someone Finding A Picture Of You In Your Calvin Klein Jeans, Tennis Shoe Roller Skates, And Mork And Mindy Striped Suspenders And Believing That's How You Look Today.

I would have posted something last week, but the delete button won out. Frankly, I'm glad it did. If my 'planned' post was floating around out there in cyberspace forever and ever it would have given me an itchy, uncomfortable feeling. I opened the aforementioned post with the incredibly Eeyore-esque thesis that I feel all my female relationships have disappeared and I'm in a weird place. Basically, it sounded like, "I have no friends anymore and I could really use them now." Then I moved on to explain, in thumb-sucking detail, that I was a victim of circumstance - no longer in a position to build relationships with other moms because my kids are in high school and parenting older, increasingly independent children is sort of hard, and also I'm trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up and I don't have a clue. Waaaa.

I mean, I do feel there is a lot of change afoot in my life. A lot. I'm no longer standing with other moms around the elementary school waiting for our kids to get out and chatting about dance classes and the Science Fair. The opportunity to talk with other people about where we are in life isn't as readily available as it used to be. I'm parenting these older, complicated, busy, independent, unfinished, challenging, amazing, evolving people - and it's much harder and more wonderful than I ever imagined it could be. I'm also thinking about starting a career again and I'm not sure what I'll end up doing or how best to go about making It (whatever It is) happen. I wish someone would just knock on my door and offer me exactly what I need and want (because even I don't have those answers), but I know that is likely not in the cards.

Thing is though, while it all makes me a little nostalgic for simpler times and sometimes a little weary of the unsteadiness of it all, I don't feel mopey (usually). Once I gave myself time to think and took a less knee-jerk reaction to a particularly lonely afternoon - I came back to a mindset that has proven itself very reliable for me over the years. It's this: choose Love over Fear. We have the ability to choose to focus on whatever feeling we want, so why not make it a good one? When Life is uncertain or challenging we get afraid. Afraid we can't do something, afraid we're not good enough, afraid we'll do something wrong, afraid it's going to be like this forever. That fear isn't helping us. It's keeping our head in a bad place, it's paralyzing us to possible action, and it's sucking the joy out of Life. We need to focus on Love instead. Love for where we are, Love for who we are with, Love for what we do, and Love for who we are.

It's because we care so much that we become afraid. We care that things are right and good and okay. But being afraid won't make it so. We need to fill our head and our heart with Love (as much as possible), and to trust (and hope and believe and all those other challenging verbs) that this very action of choosing Love instead of being afraid is already helping us move toward the kind of Life we want.*

* Please note: This is sometimes really hard to do and we need to cut ourselves some slack when we fall a tad short of a blissful mindset. Just have a glass of wine and try again tomorrow.